Renegade Ops Message Board

If we've learned anything from the world of digitally distributed video games, its that virtually any American holiday is a good excuse for a sale. Not that we're complaining, mind you, we're as into the idea of a discount as we are blowing up a good chunk of our back yard once a year.

Sega's contribution to the festivities comes in the form of discounted iOS, Android, XBLA and PSN titles, including House of the Dead III and various mobile Monkey Balls. The full list of deals can be found after the break and, while some last longer than others, you should be fine so long as you make your purchase on the fourth itself.

Speaking to IGN at the Game Developers Conference today, Avalanche Studios' CEO Christofer Sundberg said the developer will announce at least one game at E3 this year. This is the first of two titles coming from the Just Cause 2 developer in 2013, and it's not Just Cause 3 or a sequel to Renegade Ops...

There’s more of Avalanche’s Renegade Ops appearing today. The breezy and fun (sez Brendan) top-down action gets bigger with two paid-for DLC offerings. You’ve got the Reinforcement Pack (called the Vehicle Pack in the US, for some reason), and the Coldstrike Campaign, and they’re cheaper on PC than anywhere else.

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Starting tomorrow, operatives in the field will receive two supply drops from HQ. Renegade Ops agents can opt to bolster their fleet through The Vehicle Pack, which adds two new heroes to your ranks: Crystal and Blazemo. Each has their own unique set of weapons and abilities. They can be yours for 240 MS Points ($2.99).

The other option is codenamed Coldstrike Campaign, and adds three new war zones to the Renegade Ops mission agenda. Accepting this mission will require you to produce 400 MS Points ($5) for the cause -- the enemy is entrenched in the icy tundra and is employing new enemy variants such as the Golem, a large factory that pumps out low-flying aerial units. It's much different from our original intel, which showed the enemy enlisting the aid of Jewish sorcerers.

Relax, sorcerers do not exist.

Updates to Renegade Ops have been released. The updates will be applied automatically when your Steam client is restarted. The major changes include:

Renegade Ops Steam version 1.13
- Added code to support DLC content
- Added install of latest DirectX redistributables
- Added support for steam cloud saving, old save will be automatically migrated
- Added new achievements for DLC content

- Fixed an audio issue that affected audio clarity
- Fixed an issue with multi-player that should result in more overall stability
- Closing the application should no longer result in an error
- Fixed an error that caused the game to close to a black screen
- Fixed an error that caused the redistributable install files to stall during the initial game install.
- Fixed an audio crash issue affecting certain 7.1 sound setups
- Fixed an issue that caused the demo to not launch correctly

Brendan’s going to tell you all about Renegade Ops, and he doesn’t care. No, he really doesn’t care. Here’s Wot He Thinks:

Boisterous. I guess that’s the word for it. Renegade Ops is boisterous, in the same way as kicking a football around inside the house is boisterous, or building a fortress out of sofas and lampshades is boisterous. Renegade Ops is a game that’s decidedly shallow and not very inventive but there’s something about it that makes me not care about all that. This dual-schtick-em-up never truly makes me feel like a kid again but it does a great job of reminding me that I was one. A tiny, one-person wrecking ball. Absolutely no regard for my environment or actions, driven solely by a deep hunger for fun.

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Renegade Ops is Now Available on Steam!

Renegade Ops puts players in a mobile commando unit sent behind enemy lines to defeat Inferno, a madman intent on global domination. Players have the choice to fight alone in single player mode, team up offline with two-player split screen or join the dynamic 4-player online co-op experience.

Those who purchase the game on Steam can take control of the Half-Life 2 muscle car as Gordon and unleash the Antlions to aid the Renegade Ops!

Seeing that picture could have put all kinds of ideas in your head, which is why I didn’t make the headline cruelly vague. What it all actually denotes is Gordon Freeman’s rather surprising presence in the Steam version of Renegade Ops, Avalanche’s top-down, four player vehicle-based destructathon. Gordon will be driving his buggy and he’s bringing some antlions along to use in a special attack. Oh, Gordon, you’re so science. Avalanche did promise some extras for the Steam version of the game after delivering it to console-dwellers before we PC folk and it’s good of them to follow through on that promise. They’ve even given us a Gordon-specific trailer along with a release date: October 14th.

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5 out of 5

Blow all that shit up! Now!

Renegade Ops is a pedestrian name for such an absurdly explosive game as this new overhead downloadable shooter from Sega and Avalanche Studios, the Just Cause guys. It's like someone played a whole lot of Jackal back in the '80s and then, sometime recently, figured out the only way that game could be improved is with experience points, a skill tree, physics, and four-player co-op. Luckily for us, whoever had that idea was right on the money. This game is a blast.

It's probably not a surprise that Renegade Ops is so much fun purely because of the way it plays. The cars have low traction and an almost perfect feeling of weight to them, allowing you to kick out your back end as you skid around corners, spin a quick 180, or just do donuts forever if that's your thing. The game uses dual-joystick controls, so while you're sliding around every which way, you can shoot every which other way at the same time, allowing you to dodge around the smaller vehicular enemies and run circles around the larger tanks, blasting them constantly. Everything about the feel of the combat, particularly the fully upgraded regular machine gun and add-on weapons like rockets and a railgun, is solid and hard-hitting and really satisfying.

The game looks darn good, considering it's downloadable and uses an overhead perspective. There's so much height to some of the maps, as you drive through canyons and over hills and such, that the terrain closer to the camera blurs out with a depth-of-field effect. More importantly, everything explodes real nice. This is a game about nonstop, total destruction of everything around you, so it's a good thing Avalanche knows how to do fire and explosions with such style. All the carnage is rendered by the same technology that powered Just Cause 2, which somehow makes it all the more ridiculous since here it takes place amid ant-sized soldiers and armored vehicles the size of Matchbox cars.

Every image in this review will feature an explosion. My promise to you.

Renegade Ops sure doesn't take itself very seriously, casting you as a team of maverick operators who go rogue to stop a sinister army led by the cackling bald psychopath Inferno. The game makes its over-the-top tone evident right upfront, when your hard-nosed CO literally hurls his fistful of medals at a room of lily-livered UN diplomats and declares his intention to get this mess taken care of himself. It's all guitar riffs and incendiaries from there. One mission objective that sticks out in my memory is simply, "Get out of there." Another one urges you to outrun the blast from a nuclear warhead and basically just has you driving in a straight line as fast as you can. It's that kind of game.

Proving that just about any style of game can accommodate RPG mechanics, there's persistent leveling and a talent tree used to good effect here. You can pick from four playable characters, each with a different-looking vehicle that handles more or less the same. They have different special abilities, though, and a unique skill tree that just distributes the same set of useful abilities in a different order. At first I couldn't figure out a reason anyone would play a character other than the spunky girl with the giant airstrike, but as the game gets tougher there are cases where other abilities, like the heavy guy's thick armored shield, certainly come in handy too. Each character has discrete experience so you level them separately, and you can mix and match them throughout a playthrough on each mission, or even take them into co-op that goes up to four players online. The frame rate can bog down a bit in two-player splitscreen or when four players are just going crazy with their weapons online, but them's the breaks.

Oh yeah, sometimes you fly a helicopter. That's badass too!

You could plow through the nine-mission campaign here in three or four hours if you just barreled through it, but there's a number of side objectives in each mission that you might not finish off the first time, given that the main objectives are timed. Also, if you're into achievements and trophies, there's one for going back and beating every level on the considerably more difficult Hardcore mode, which you can do either alone or with friends. I'm not usually big on going back and replaying games for that sort of reason, but the core action is so much fun here that I'll take any excuse to play through this one again. The difficulty doesn't scale to the number of players, making the normal setting feel like a breeze for a team of four, so in that sense, Hardcore is probably the best way to play in a group anyway.

Renegade Ops feels like the model of a fantastic downloadable game designed to the strengths of digital distribution. It's big, loud, sort of dumb, and a ton of fun because it focuses on one thing, and does that one thing exceedingly well. For $15, what more do you want?

When is a launch trailer not a launch trailer? That’s right, kids, when the game isn’t due out for another couple of weeks. That’s the awkward situation Renegops has thrust us into: It has just came out on the consoles, but isn’t going to be gracing the PC with it’s presence until later on this month. Still, we’ve got pretty moving pictures to keep ourselves entertained in the meantime: (more…)

It’s been many, many months in the making, but as you’ll have noticed yesterday, we’ve unleashed Renegade Ops onto PSN as part of the PSN PLAY promotion. We’re incredibly pleased to be part of this new promotion, and hope that you are ready to help General Bryant and the Renegades defeat the tyrannical Inferno and thwart his dastardly plans.

Hopefully you already have a good idea of what the game is about, you may remember I did ramble at length in previous blog posts such as Meet the Team, and Let’s talk about upgrades, but if not allow me to give you a quick reminder; Inferno is threatening to detonate bombs in capital cities around the world, unless his demands are met, and it is in the hands of the Renegade Ops team that the safety of the world now rests. General Bryant and his crack team are taking their range of vehicles, weapons and various specialities to the battlefields to destroy the Inferno threat once and for all.

If you haven’t had the chance to try the game yet, then please help yourself to the trial that is now available via PlayStation Store; we’re confident that once you’ve had this game in your hands for a couple of minutes that you’ll be converted. Not only does the game have a lengthy single-player campaign, but you can also play co-operatively via local split-screen, and you and up to three friends can tackle the Inferno menace online. This is where the game truly excels, as there’s nothing quite like teaming up with your friends and laying waste to countless enemies, destructible buildings and racing each other to upgrade drops and objectives. The game is about teamwork, but you don’t always have be the nice guy or gal.

There isn’t much more to say that I haven’t already, other than I hope you give this game a chance, we’ve enjoyed working on it, and the incredibly talented team at Avalanche have created a truly epic, explosively fun digital title!

It’s out now for $14.99 (20% discount for PS Plus users) and below I’ve listed the trophies you can expect to be earning – if you’re good enough that is.

Trophy List:

[Bronze] Goody Two Shoes – Bring 20 Prisoners to the Church
[Bronze] Airbourn – Pilot a Helicopter
[Bronze] Sergeant Slaughter – Kill Inferno’s Sergeants
[Bronze] Jonesing for Relics – Return all the relics to the Museum
[Bronze] From Cold Dead Hands – Steal all Inferno’s Weapons Crates
[Bronze] Supply Problems – Destroy all Mining Carts in the Kaabe Mountains
[Bronze] Inferno’s Briefs – Steal all the Document Briefs
[Bronze] To Hell and Back – Complete Mission 9 on any Difficulty
[Bronze] The Daily Grind – Get a Character to max level
[Silver] Tough Stuff – Complete all Levels on Hardcore Difficulty
[Silver] Lord Master of Great Skill – Get “Skill Rank – Omnipotent” in a match
[Gold] Mega Kill Combo – Get a 100x Damage Streak in a match

Renegades out!

This tiny ode to destruction is perhaps best described as angry Micro Machines. Or, if you’ve sensibly passed the point where ritually namechecking 16-bit games is any way useful or meaningful, ‘that one with the death-spewing car the size of a thumbnail.’ Throw in that it comes from the creators of the gleefully absurd Just Cause 2 and I’m immediately side-stepping the uninspiring name and paying close attention. Willfully stupid, Renegade Ops is a game about driving a tiny buggy around a series of lush, top-down environments and riddling pretty much anything you run into with bullets, rockets, railguns and airstrikes. It’s a twin-stick shooter with a car, impeccably-rendered tropical trees and a mind for mayhem.(more…)

Renegade Ops, or “Renegops” as probably no one but me will call it, the upcoming top-down arcade blast ‘em up from Avalanche Studios, has got itself a new video-trailer thing. I hope you like weapons and upgrade systems, because that’s what it is showing off: (more…)

I wanted to drop by with more information about our PSN PLAY-bound title Renegade Ops, focusing on upgrades you’ll use to enhance your chosen vehicle. The upgrades are there to help you tailor your character to your preferred play style…though all four characters can be played balls-to-the-wall, and you’re never going to have enough time to sit back and take in the gorgeous scenery for long.

First though, allow me to give you the first exclusive look at the latest trailer which surprisingly enough shows off some of these upgrades.

The better you are at the game – in other words the more enemies you destroy, stunts you pull and collectibles you grab – the quicker you’ll reach the next level, and in this game levels mean prizes…well, upgrade points. So, how can you spend these points? Well you’ll have the choice of three skill trees to spread your points over, so you can customise your character depending on how you best play the game. The only limit to this is the amount of upgrades you can have active at one time; the higher your level, the more upgrades you can equip.

What I’ll do below is detail the upgrades you’ll have access to, and then give you an example using my current level 19 Roxy build.

All Character Upgrades

Defense

Spare Parts: Chance of spawning health pick-ups from your vehicle when hit by explosive damage

Nitro: Double tap turbo button for nitro speed boost, also extinguishes fire if used when burning

Second Chance: Death is delayed by 10 seconds so you can find a health pick up to stay alive. Second chance only triggers once per life

Extra Life: Increases the numbers of loves you start each mission with by 1

Hardened Hull: Maximum health increased and health received from pick-ups increased

Auto Repair: Automatically regenerate health when low

Offense

Auto Reload: Automatically generate ammo for secondary weapon over time

Ammo Surplus: Secondary ammo pick-ups give more ammo than normal

Advanced Arms: Rocket launcher – homing rockets, Railgun – shorter charge time, Flame Thrower – Damage increased

Magazine Size – Basic: Secondary weapon magazine size increased

Magazine Size – Elite: Secondary weapon magazine size greatly increased

Now it starts to get different, with each character having unique upgrades, as follows:

Roxy Upgrades

Special Ability: Rocket Strike – Drops beacons that are hit by a rain of rockets from the sky, causing area damage.

Offense

Rocket Launcher Kit: Start Every life with Rocket Launcher and some ammo equipped

Tactical

Efficiency – Basic: Rocket Strike cooldown reduced

Efficiency – Elite: Rocket Strike cooldown greatly reduced

Auto Strike: Rocket Strike automatically targets and attempts to directly hit enemies in area

Bombardment – Basic: Rocket Strike duration and radius increased

Bombardment – Elite: Rocket Strike duration and radius greatly increased

Quick Strike: Rocket Strike hits instantly and has increased damage radius

So, to give an example to provide further context, here’s how this ‘expert’ Renegade Ops player does it:

Roxy (Currently level 19)

Defense: Nitro (short additional speed boost, removes fire if burning)

Extra Life (Start each mission with 1 extra life)

Offense: Ammo Surplus (Secondary ammo pick-ups give more ammo than usual)

Tactical: Bombardment – Basic (Rocket Strike duration and radius increased)

Efficiency – Basic (Rocket Strike cooldown reduced)

Quick Strike (Rocket Strike hits instantly and has increased damage radius)

Current skills equipped: Ammo Surplus, Efficiency – Basic and Quick Strike

This build means that the already nimble Buggy that Roxy drives is now suitably powerful, too. Secondary weapons can be spammed a lot more due to the extra ammo, and I’ve powered up my special ability into something quite devastating. The only problem is without any defensive abilities equipped, I’m currently something of a glass cannon…but hey, you play how you play. In this game I like to be in and out of the action quickly dealing as much damage as possible.

Usually in co-operative games, I play a support role, whether that’s as a medic or engineer. But in Renegade Ops I want to be nimble and explosively deadly, and that’s why I prefer Roxy. However, you may like to support your teammates by causing disabling effects to the enemies, so your preference may be for Diz and her awesome EMP special ability.

Diz Upgrades

Special Ability: EMP – Releases an electromagnetic pulse over a large area disabling all enemies within this area making them susceptible to attacks for a limited period.

Offense

Railgun Kit: Start Every life with Railgun and some ammo equipped

Tactical

Static Shock – Basic: EMP causes minor damage to enemies in addition to normal effects

Static Shock – Elite: EMP causes high damage to enemies in addition to normal effects

Black Out: Duration of EMP effect on enemies increased

Efficiency – Basic: EMP cooldown reduced

Efficiency – Elite: EMP cooldown greatly reduced

Super Charged: Increased EMP radius and enemy rockets are disabled in mid-flight when hit by EMP

Armand Upgrades

Special Ability: Armadillo Plating (Shield) – Extendable shield plating that causes enemy bullets to bounce back at the attackers.

Offense

Flame Thrower Kit: Start Every life with Flame Thrower and some ammo equipped

Tactical

Efficiency – Basic: Shield cooldown reduced

Efficiency – Elite: Shield cooldown greatly reduced

Rebound: Shield deflects enemy bullets and rockets back at the enemy for damage

Time Extension: Maximum Shield duration increased

Guarded Repair: Regenerate health over time while Shield is active

Ram Plate: Destroy small enemy vehicles when ramming them and no penalty when driving through buildings

Gunnar Upgrades

Special Ability: Heavy Cannon – Extends heavy cannon that fires high velocity, armour piercing rounds causing extreme damage. Vehicle cannot move while active.

Offense

Rocket Launcher Kit: Start Every life with Rocket Launcher and some ammo equipped

Tactical

Efficiency – Basic: Heavy Cannon cooldown reduced

Efficiency – Elite: Heavy Cannon cooldown greatly reduced

Power Hydraulics: Increased Heavy Cannon turret rotation speed

Explosive Rounds: Heavy Cannon causes additional splash damage to enemies near area of impact

Riot Shield: A shield protects against bullets from front while Heavy Cannon is active

Counter Shot: Heavy Cannon shots destroy enemy rockets in mid-flight

So now you have a good idea of the depth of the upgrades available, and how you can experience four different play-styles by trying every character, or playing the same character using different builds depending on your mood and the composition of your team.

Finally, if any of you are going to PAX this year you’ll be able to get the chance to try Renegade Ops there. So come and find us, get your hands on the game, ask as many questions as you like, and prepare for Renegade Ops. Hopefully I’ll see some of you there!

An overview of the game modes in Renegade Ops.

SAN FRANCISCO & LONDON - SEGA of America, Inc. and SEGA Europe Ltd. are excited to announce that you can now pre order Renegade Ops from digital partners for $15.00/ 9.99 UK/ 12.99/ 15.00 AUD$. To celebrate the highly anticipated game created by Avalanche Studios, an explosive pre-order offer is...

Bomb through the jungle like a renegade in this gameplay.

Renegade Ops graces the floor of E3 2011 with a playable demo full of fire and destruction!

You wouldn't expect Avalanche Studios--the developer behind the big, crazy Just Cause 2--to get into the downloadable dual-stick shooter genre. It's overcrowded and a lot of the stuff hitting that genre these days feels like also-ran, sub-par trash. But I was pleasantly surprised by Renegade Ops, a four-player dual-stick shooter that opens up the world and lets you tear ass over, around, and through just about any obstacle that gets in your way.

It starts with a comic-style setup that makes it look like a lost issue of G.I. Joe or something, but it quickly dumps you and up to three companions (if you're playing online) into the world. The mission that was shown at a pre-E3 event essentially had all four players spreading out to find hostages that needed to be returned to a church for safe keeping. An on-screen arrow points you in the direction of your next pick-up, and it seems like the game is pointing different players at different prisoners, for maximum efficiency. Or maybe I was just better at it than the people I was playing with.

It sounds straightforward, and it doesn't necessarily stray super far from what you'd expect. The difference is that the world feels large and open. The arrow is pointing you in a direction, but the environments aren't confining you to one specific path. And your little jeep-like vehicle is surprisingly resilient, allowing you to take on several enemies at once. You'll certainly find a lot of buildings and shacks along the way, and the smaller shacks are no match for the bumper on your vehicle. You can just plow right through some of these structures, which is pretty satisfying. The other cool thing that sets Renegade Ops apart is the speed. It's a fast-moving game and your jeeps skid around corners and generally act wild. So simply driving around with the left stick is fun, because you're kind of constantly in danger of sliding right off a cliff if you aren't at least a little careful. There's also a speed boost, which is fun for bashing through buildings even harder.

The demo was brief, and it's hard to tell if the full game will actually be any good, but my brief time with it was certainly enough to leave me wanting to know more about the final game. It almost feels like a modernized, dual-stick take on Konami's classic, Jackal. Sega's putting Renegade Ops out later this year on Xbox Live Arcade, PC, and PlayStation Network.

Get your fix of destruction on wheels with this interview with the Game Director Axel Lindberg!

A first look at fiery gameplay footage from the jungle of Renegade Ops.

Put the hurt on the bad guys as a mobile commando unit in this downloadable arcade shooter.

Who doesn't love digital explosions? In Renegade Ops, you'll take control of powerful vehicles and obliterate the opposition. This top-down shooter from the developers of Just Cause 2 has enough firepower to destroy a small island, so let's find out more about it...

“Renegade Ops” is the, uh, inspired name of the next project to come out of Avalanche Studios, the developer of the open-world action title Just Cause and its quirk-filled follow-up Just Cause 2. And get this--Ops is a downloadable, vehicular combat game that uses Just Cause 2's tech.

In a press release put out by Avalanche's publishing partner Sega, a bit of the setup is explained. In the campaign portion, you'll control “mobile commando unit” in charge of killing terrorist goons led by a bad dude named "Inferno." You'll be able to accomplish this unforgettable goal with up to four players online, but you’ll also be able to get your anti-terrorist on by lonesome or with a couch partner via split-screen play. Sega claims that the shooter will also feature a“wide” array of vehicles to use and plenty of heavy weapons, including the Gatling gun and an electromagnetic shock gun. Sounds renegade.
 


Speaking exclusively with Eurogamer, Avalanche producer Andreas Thorsén claims that Shadow Complex had a big impact on the development of Renegade Ops. No, really. "A lot of inspiration came from looking at Shadow Complex and what they did to the Super Metroid mechanics,” he said. “We wanted to do something similar, using old school mechanics created with the looks of today."

Renegade Ops is due out at some point later this year and is slated for release across PC digital download, Xbox Live Arcade, and PSN.    

RENEGADE OPS! That’s how I’m going to be pronouncing that game’s name. Shouted, every time. It’s a name that needs bellowing. But before you put on your haughty trousers, there’s likely to be a touch of irony about such a bombastic name, since this is coming from Just Cause developers, Avalanche. It’s described as a “twin stick vehicle shooter”, according to Eurogamer, planned to be released as a download-only, arcade-style, top-down shoot-them-up. Phew.

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Just Cause 2 developer Avalanche Studios joins the Generic Title Squad (home to recruits like Modern Combat: Domination, Conflict: Denied Ops and Sniper: Ghost Warrior) with its new downloadable game, Renegade Ops. The game itself sounds much more distinctive.

The Sega-published PSN/XBLA title, due this year, focuses on vehicular combat, with players taking control of a commando unit fighting to defeat the evil terrorist Madman Inferno. Playing online in groups of up to four, Renegade Op-eratives will have a variety of vehicles at their disposal, capable of attacks " from dispersing electromagnetic shock waves to the deployment of a huge Gatling gun armed to the teeth."

In the announcement of the game, Avalanche senior producer Andreas Thorsén said that "the IP is all about driving or flying around blowing stuff up while playing with your friends," which he calls "a dream-project" for the studio. May we suggest a title change to "Driving or Flying Around Blowing Stuff Up?" We think it sticks better.